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Development of influence hierarchies in small discussion groups: Alternatives for measuring temporal change
Author(s) -
Reynolds Paul Davidson,
Fisek Mustafa Hamit
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830170605
Subject(s) - hierarchy , variance (accounting) , egalitarianism , duration (music) , mathematics , statistics , econometrics , economics , political science , law , accounting , politics , market economy , art , literature
One of the more fundamental characteristics of any small interacting group is its influence hierarchy, or status structure, and considerable attention has been given to describing and explaining the development of influence hierarchies. Using data from 59 three‐person groups, three measures of temporal change—clock time, cumulative occurrence of acts time, and an approximation to the cumulative duration of acts time—were used to provide descriptions of the development of influence hierarchies in these groups. Use of the approximation to the cumulative occurence of acts time, the cumulative percentage of acts time, resulted in (a) lower average variance, averaged over the time periods, of the average percentage of acts initiated by the group members, (b) smoother curves describing the development of the influence hierarchy, and (c) an indication that a brief period of egalitarianism occurred two‐thirds of the way through the discussion, an indication which was not evident when the developmental description was based on the other temporal measures.